Who is Meenakshi Jain, the newly nominated Rajya Sabha MP whose books countered the lies and anti-Hindu propaganda of leftist historians
Eminent historian, Dr Meenakshi Jain, has been nominated by President Droupadi Murmu to the Rajya Sabha on Saturday (12th July). Jain has served as an Associate Professor of History in Gargi College at the University of Delhi. She has authored various books relating to Indian civilisation, religion and politics.
Her nomination to the Rajya Sabha is a significant step towards recognising scholarship having indigenous perspectives. In 2020, she was conferred the Padma Shri by the Government of India for her exceptional contribution to the field of history. Some of her textbooks have been included in the school curriculum.
Dr Jain is also a former member of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library and the Governing Council of the Indian Council of Historical Research. Currently, Jain is a Senior Fellow of the Indian Council of Social Science Research. Her areas of research include cultural and religious developments in medieval and early modern India.
Dr Jain has done extensive research on various historical topics and has a vast body of work on issues relating to medieval and modern Indian history. Her historical works include, Flight of Deities and Rebirth of Temples (2019), The Battle for Rama: Case of the temple at Ayodhya (2017), Sati: Evangelicals, Baptist Missionaries and the changing Colonial Discourse (2016), Rama and Ayodhya (2013), Parallel Pathways: Essays on Hindu –Muslim Relations (1707-1857) (2010).
Jain’s works cover a wide range of topics in Indian history, including the practice of Sati, ancient temples, and India’s rich religious heritage, but her works on the Ayodhya Ram Temple stand out. Through her meticulously researched works, she presented a scholarly rebuttal to the established leftist narratives propagated by the likes of Romila Thapar and Irfan Habib, who distorted historical facts relating to the issues of national and civilizational importance like the Ram Temple in Ayodhya.
How Dr Jain exposed the left-narrative on the Ram Temple in Ayodhya
Dr Meenakshi Jain presented arguments founded on historical evidence in favour of the Ram Temple in her books on the Ayodhya dispute, Rama and Ayodhya (2013) and The Battle for Rama: Case of the Temple at Ayodhya (2017). Her books cleared the way for the Supreme Court judgment on the Ayodhya dispute in 2019, which held that a Ram Temple historically existed at the Janmabhoomi site. In her works on the Ram Temple, she also exposed how the so-called historians of the left distorted the truth and how the historical and government documents were tampered with after the British considered the site the birthplace of Lord Ram. According to Jain, all the literary evidence before 1989, when the left-historian hijacked the narrative about the Ram Temple, pointed to the fact that Babri Masjid was built on the site of a Hindu temple.
She said that a strong section of Muslims wanted the Ayodhya Ram Temple site to be handed over to the Hindus. But these left historians kept the dispute alive by convincing the Muslims that they had a strong case against the Ram Temple and promised to provide them with evidence for it.
Dr Jain’s latest book on the history of ‘Kashi’
In her latest book, “Vishwanath Rises and Rises” (2024), Jain writes about the history of one of the world’s oldest and holiest cities, Kashi. In the book, she gives an account of centuries of invasions and desecrations beginning from the early Islamic invasions till the destruction of the Kashi Vishwanath Mandir in 1669. She throws light on the unwavering commitment of Hindus, who made repeated attempts to rebuild their temples in Kashi, which were destroyed by the Muslim invaders. She cites, inter alia, the temple restoration efforts of Ahilyabai Holkar and the Marathas.
News